From the Diary of Anne Frank
Why Anne keeps a diary
Explain why Anne keeps a diary and what her life sketch shows.
Why writing felt strange. Anne had never written anything before, and she thought no one would ever care about 'the musings of a thirteen-year-old schoolgirl'. But she felt like writing, and needed to 'get all kinds of things off my chest'.
'Paper has more patience than people.' Paper listens without getting bored, without interrupting and without judging. You can tell it anything.
Lonely among many friends. She had loving parents, a sixteen-year-old sister, 'about thirty people I can call friends', loving aunts and a good home. What she did not have was one true friend to confide in (share private things with). 'Maybe it's my fault,' she says. So the diary becomes that friend, Kitty.
Her short life sketch. She writes it so 'Kitty' will understand her stories, 'much as I dislike doing so':
- her father, 'the most adorable father I've ever seen', married her mother when he was 36 and she was 25;
- Margot was born in 1926 and Anne in 1929, in Frankfurt;
- her father moved to Holland in 1933;
- the girls stayed with their grandmother in Aachen, then followed. Anne was 'plunked down on the table as a birthday present for Margot';
- she went to a Montessori school; at the end of the year she and Mrs Kuperus, the headmistress, said a tearful goodbye.
Her grandmother. Grandma fell ill and died in January 1942. 'No one knows how often I think of her and still love her.' At Anne's 1942 birthday, Grandma's candle was lit with the rest.
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